Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-03-10-Speech-1-118"
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"en.20080310.19.1-118"2
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"Mr President, Vice-President of the Commission, ladies and gentlemen, we are today celebrating the conclusion of a procedure that started as far back as September 2005.
The road that we have travelled has been long and in some cases difficult, but ultimately I feel that it was worth the effort. The issue at stake is the security of civil aviation. The regulation that we had in force, that has been in force up to now, was adopted in the emotional climate surrounding the attacks on the Twin Towers on 11 September 2001. It had a difficult birth, but was then approved and applied and, while it has had some success in recent years, there have been practical gaps and inadequacies.
It is for that reason that we are now about to revise it. The aim is to provide a more flexible response to technological, psychological and behavioural changes in the fight against terrorism, obviously taking account of the experience that we have gained up to now. Security and protection from terrorist attacks are an obvious priority, but cannot be discussed in isolation. They have to be seen in a slightly more balanced context.
Checks have to be stringent and efficient, but should not overly inconvenience passengers, and their application should not entail unnecessary costs. Costs should possibly be shared and should not be borne entirely by passengers. It is for that reason that new checks cannot be introduced without adequate democratic scrutiny. It is on those two points – costs and democratic accountability – that Parliament’s delegation focused its attention during the conciliation stage of this procedure.
As regards costs, I am happy to be able to inform this House that an article, not a recital, has been included to lay down that they – security costs – must be shared between passengers, airports, air carriers and national governments. Under a further article, not an interinstitutional declaration as in 2002, but an article, the Commission is to examine the problem in more detail and to put proposals before this House and the Council in order to resolve the problem through an appropriate sharing of costs between taxpayers and passengers.
As regards democratic accountability, we successfully managed to achieve the use of enhanced comitology or comitology with scrutiny, especially when any new check, control or limitation on passengers’ lives is introduced. Were Parliament to decide in future that a security measure is disproportionate, it will be able to call for a public debate in order adequately to examine such considerations.
Overall, I feel that the balance between an effective fight against terrorism and, at the same time, respect which is as broad as possible for privacy, practices, and pointless irritations for passengers, has in this way been achieved. Obviously, only actual testing of its application will tell us whether this has been fully achieved.
It is for that reason, Mr President, that I would recommend to the Chamber, to our House, that it approves the agreement reached in conciliation so that the Commission can make an effective start on its work."@en1
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